Kindle Paperwhite vs Keyboard

I bought a new Kindle. I have a perfectly good Kindle Keyboard but about two weeks ago I bought a brand new Kindle Paperwhite (2013 model) on a whim. It was quite an indulgence to upgrade when there was nothing wrong with the old model, but I’ve been pretty pleased with the new one!

If you’re considering a similar upgrade you might be wondering whether it’s worth it. Here’s what I’ve found:

Pros:

The backlight! This of course is the biggest advantage the Paperwhite has over the Keyboard. Brilliant, even coverage which is easy on the eyes, and you can turn it off completely if you don’t need it. It’s quite powerful too – I’ve haven’t needed to turn it up any more than 50% so far.

The touch screen is quick and intuitive.

Navigation, page turns and functions (eg dictionary look up) are much faster and more responsive.

It’s really nice being able to browse your books by cover.

It’s smaller and lighter than the Keyboard, but the screen is bigger.

The type is darker and clearer. (I read in a forum that some people had compared demo model Paperwhites to their Keyboards and found the type to be blocky and inferior, but I think the demos must have just gone a bit wrong from being handled too much and too roughly in store.)

You can get cases that work like iPad covers – open it and the Kindle wakes up without having to press any buttons!

It can roughly calculate how much time it will take you to finish the current chapter, as well as the rest of the book.

I thought I’d miss the page turn buttons from the Keyboard but you get used to turning pages by touch pretty easily. Sometimes it’s even better than the buttons, eg if you’re eating a sandwich and only have a spare knuckle.

You can look at multiple word phrases in the dictionary much more easily now.

Collections now appear in alphabetical order rather than recently accessed.

Authors are now sorted alphabetically by last name, instead of first name. (Although this could have had something to do with me cleaning up a lot of my collection’s metadata.)

The Page Flip feature isn’t quite as seamless as thumbing through a few pages in a real book, but it could come in handy.

I haven’t really used it yet but the Vocab Builder sounds like a nifty extra.

I had to upgrade my firmware to 5.4.2 to get my Mac to recognise the Paperwhite without resetting it every time. I don’t like the way collections are now somehow synced but luckily I haven’t had the grey ghosting issue other people have complained of.

The Kindle Collections plugin for Calibre doesn’t work with the Paperwhite so when I was setting it up with my content I had to file everything manually (but you only have to do that once and then you’re good to go).

The battery life does seem to be a bit shorter thank the Keyboard, but still superior to iPads.